Police have raided the Road Development Corporation (RDC) offices, conducting an extensive search of the premises that lasted nearly 12 hours.
Police and the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) investigators arrived at the RDC at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday to investigate transfers of the company’s petty cash, in amounts totalling more than MVR 13 million, into the personal accounts of some RDC employees.
According to an RDC employee, police investigators entered the offices and retained a single employee in each department while the rest were vacated. Afterwards, until the search was completed, no one was allowed to enter or exit without permission, the employee said.
Upon completing the search, Police left the offices at around 11:00 p.m. with a significant number of RDC files and documents loaded onto a police vehicle.
“They took a lot of documents… The office was very cooperative [with the investigation],” an RDC employee said.
The deposits, which raised red flags in terms of proper corporate conduct, were made to the bank accounts of the company’s Managing Director (MD), Moosa Ali Manik, and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Yasir Hassan. However, RDC has denied allegations of wrongdoing and filed a civil suit against media outlets reporting on this matter, as Managing Director Ali Manik insists the money was earmarked for company worksites in the form of petty cash.
Ali Manik told local media that RDC employees worked at 30 sites and each site received monthly deposits of MVR 10,000 as petty cash. The money is deposited into the accounts of employees who work at the sites, he said, adding that the ‘large amount’ was the combined deposits over the past four years.
Authorities have not commented on the ongoing investigation.